But it’s not like Paul to leave it at that. He elaborates with a
list of things that can cause people to think – God is absent, no
longer loves me, or is powerless to help me. What can make us feel that
way? Anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the
sword. A powerful elaboration, but when they are strung together in a
list like that, each one tends to lose its impact. So take just one of
them and think about it. Take anguish. Dictionary definition: great
suffering, as from worry, grief, or pain; agony.

Anguish is no small thing. Worry, grief, pain – they all have a
way of taking over and coloring our perception of everything else.
People trying to help say things like, “oh, but you’re worried about
nothing,” or “It must be awful for you, but you’ll get over it.” They
want to help, but being in anguish is like being in your own private
hell, and you know those well-meaning people aren’t in it with you. The
pain is all your own, sitting implacably on your heart.

Paul had his periods of anguish. He referred to his constant worry
for all the churches he had founded. He described feeling anguished
over his own Jewish people and their failure to recognize the messiah.
But when he came out of the anguish he realized that God had been with
him through it all, not preventing his anguish but sustaining him
through it, and was still there when the anguish dissipated.

As with anguish, so with any other worldly threat: distress,
persecution, famine, the sword. Nothing in this world is more powerful
than God’s love. And nothing out of this world either. Angels, not
even malevolent ones. Not present and future things, which may be a
reference to astrology, very popular in those days. Height and depth
may refer to the signs of the zodiac and the elevations of the planets
above the horizon. Nothing in the whole demonic realm, what he means by
“principalities and powers.”

Speaking of which, sometimes a young person who has dabbled in
the occult – astrology or witchcraft of Satanism – approaches me and
asks if their situation is hopeless, whether God has abandoned them to
an evil power. I tell them no. Far from hopeless. You’ve been foolish
but God is wise. There may be occult powers, but God is infinitely
more powerful. Maybe you abandoned God, but God did not abandon you.
God, our Almighty Creator, loves us unconditionally and permanently.
There’s nothing we can do to make Him hate us. The proof? Jesus
Christ. Just before today’s passage, Romans has this familiar passage:

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not
spare His own Son, but handed Him over for us all, how will He not give
us everything else along with Him? Who will bring a charge against
God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us. Who will condemn? It is
Christ Jesus Who died, was raised, and Who intercedes for us.
– Rom. 8:31-34

In view of that, no situation is hopeless, no matter how desperate.
What can separate us from the love of Christ? Short answer – nothing.

So really, we have nothing to fear. Except for one thing.
Notice that Paul mentions all manner of external threats. Well, anguish
may seem internal, but it hits us as if from outside, against our will.
The one thing that can separate us from God is internal, our own
choice.

None of us has the power to make God hate us, but we each do have
the power to reject God, and His love that pursues us and calls us.
Each of us, by the power of our own free will, is able to rationalize
what is immoral, identify ourselves with what is wrong, cling to what is
evil, cling so determinedly that when God’s justice destroys what is
evil we choose to go with it into the abyss.

That possibility should scare us! If it does, that’s a blessing;
a healthy fear of our own waywardness that keeps us humble, repentant,
and responsive to God’s unconditional, permanent love.

=====

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Pulled the trigger on the 301 MOVE IT option
June 1, 2014. Working my way through all the webpages. .

Regards,

Vic

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Silence in the face of evil is speaking. "We've had enough of exhortations to be silent!
Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten
because of silence." Saint Catherine of Siena

“An
error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is
suppressed…. He who does not oppose an evident crime is open to the suspicion of
secret complicity.” – Pope Felix III

“Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God's creatures.
What you are in God's sight is what you are and nothing more”—Justice Clarence Thomas

"Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a 'right' to persist in evil-in any sin at all-and who thus rejects redemption." Pope Saint John Paul the GreatDOMINUM ET VIVIFICANTEM

"Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it, and, indeed, to neglect to confound evil men-when we can do it-is no less a sin than to encourage them." Pope St. Felix III

If a purposeful violator of the Constitution who is a sworn officer of the governemt is not a domestic enemy of America and a traitor, then
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and America has lost its grounding and its very purpose for being. Anti-American-Court

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Never be lukewarm.Life itself demands passion.He who is indifferent to God has already forfeited his soul.He who is indifferent to politics has already forfeited his liberty.In America, religion is not mere window dressing and citizenship is not a spectator sport.Do not allow our common destiny as a whole people to just happen without your input. Seek the Truth; find the Way; live the Life; please God, and live forever.

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"We belong to the Church militant; and She is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass Her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights.”--Pope Pius XII

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may deride it, but in the end, there it is.—Winston
Churchill

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who
deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.—Ayn Rand

Atheist Genesis:

In the beginning there was nothing, and nothing happened to nothing.
And then nothing accidentally exploded and created everything.
And then some bits of everything accidentally encountered other bits of everything and formed some new kinds of everything.
And then some bits of everything accidentally arranged themselves into self-replicating bits of everything.
And then some self-replicating bits of everything accidentally arranged themselves into dinosaurs.
See?

“ … for I have sworn upon
the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind
of man.” wrote Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush in
the year of our Lord 1800. The context
involved resistance to any form of Christianity or Deism legally imposing
itself throughout the USA. We must wonder what he might say
about our current government's forced imposition of strict secularism – i.e.,
anti-theism – throughout the USA. I submit that legally enforced secularism of society, like theocracy, like Marxism,
and like Islam, is, precisely, a form of tyranny over the mind of man.Nothing good can come from the religious cleansing of Judaeo-Christian society. Government imposed secularism is just another form of theocracy.